


Cover the Waterfront

by rosepetalrevolution



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, F/F, and focuses a lot on the DLC, this is entirely based upon my own playthrough just FYI
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:04:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosepetalrevolution/pseuds/rosepetalrevolution
Summary: Five Times Courier Six left Veronica Waiting in the Lucky 38 (& One Time She Didn't)





	Cover the Waterfront

Veronica was stretched out across the entire length of the master bedroom’s sofa, staring up at the place where crumbling ceiling met peeling wallpaper, when the Courier finally returned from her third extended absence. The noise of the elevator opening to the 22nd floor’s suite had grown mundane in recent weeks, what with the newfound freedom the Lucky 38’s “esteemed guests” had found after House suddenly passed and the robot with the cowboy face abandoned his post. They could come and go as they pleased, now, though out of respect for the woman who had brought them all together, they mostly waited patiently, and they still never ventured up to the casino’s penthouse. For as much as any of them might grumble, even Cass, the 38 was still likely the safest place in the entire Mojave. Caesar’s men had started hunting the Courier and her allies openly, veteran assassins traveling in packs of four, carrying assault rifles and no apparent plans of returning to their fortress alive. Then there were the remaining Fiends and the lingering convicts who’d been scattered from the Correctional Facility. Both groups lacked leaders and recognizable skill, but neither chucking dynamite nor a psycho-fueled machete-hacking spree required coordination or precision to prove devastating. Even the Mojave’s Deathclaws, typically avoidable, seemed to have grown bolder and stronger the more deeply the Courier’s tracks through the wastes had cut. 

And so they stayed inside, and when they ventured out, they stayed together. Trips off the Strip, even when they didn’t extend past Freeside’s gates, were conducted in pairs or trios. Every sniper needs a spotter, Boone had said. For her part, Veronica had always been glad to have a friend watching her back. It’s hard to throw a punch at an assailant coming from behind.

Since offering her knowledge and services to the Followers, Veronica had come to find a bit more purpose in even the days she spent confined to the suite. Arcade didn’t always prove to be the most willing collaborator, having admitted his preference for working alone, but he could usually be convinced to ‘work alone together,’ their silent camaraderie a welcome source of warmth. He knew how keenly she felt the Courier’s absence during these extended periods without any news – they all felt it, of course, but Arcade admitted he understood the impulse to hold tightly to a lover for fear that you’d never find another who truly understood the road you’d walked. Veronica had been granted a glimpse behind his cool, but cracked, exterior. The kindness and idealism she found were only strengthened by his intelligence and stubbornness. It was a rare combination in the wastes, at least so far as Veronica had seen them, and she thanked the universe for sending him to their little crew when it had. His arrival, just before the Courier’s first disappearance, might have been the only thing that kept her sane during those fearful and uncertain days.

* * *

The first time had been the worst, of course. The Courier had taken Arcade and the dog out to poke around what she believed to be the source of that Sierra Madre radio advertisement they’d all heard. Veronica had refused to go; the woman’s velvety voice that spoke of luxury and thrills gave her the creeps, yet the Courier’s curiosity won out. It always did.

But there was no vindication when the trio hadn’t returned within a week. Without the Courier to let them into the Lucky 38, the remaining companions weren’t even sure if it would be worth it to go out looking for their friends. Not even House had news for them, at least none that he would share with them through his Securitron proxies. There was little to do but sit in the ancient hotel and worry. And drink – Cass’s habits and generosity helped to take the edge off, even just a little.

It had almost been a fortnight when the Courier walked silently, sullenly through the elevator doors. She was alone, and Cass would later admit that she had immediately assumed the worst in light of that. But they were all quickly assured that Arcade and Rex had escaped the trap they’d stumbled into, that the Courier had sent them back to Freeside in her last moments of consciousness before being dragged to hell. Then she shut herself in the master bedroom for the better part of a day. Veronica had begun to consider breaking the door down, but the Courier eventually called for her, and then desperately pulled her into bed.

She’d changed out of the unfamiliar police armor she’d returned home in, pulled on the softest pre-war clothes stashed in the wardrobe. A fading ring of bruises was now visible around her neck. Her eyes, deep brown and normally so warm, so attentive, had swollen from crying. She couldn’t look at Veronica, just pulled her close, nestled her face into the crook of her neck. Veronica traced her fingers down the Courier’s back, whispering reassurances into her close-cropped hair. She could feel her trembling; while Veronica was the taller of the two women, she’d never before felt the Courier, who’d not only cheated death at the hands of Vegas, but spit her tobacco in its face, make herself small. The Courier’s breathing eventually steadied, slowed. Veronica didn’t sleep that night, instead keeping a vigil of sorts, as though she could ward off whatever old world ghosts the Courier had found.

Two days later, the Courier finally spoke, her tone hushed as she and Veronica sat cross-legged on their bed and shared a breakfast of maize porridge and roasted banana yucca. She’d been drugged, kidnapped, brought to the preserved Sierra Madre and the ruins of the villas that surrounded it. The entire place had been smothered by a cloud of toxic gas, which had turned the few people who managed to live there into something worse than the feral ghouls who’d succumbed to rads in the wasteland. The hotel itself was a death trap, designed as such two hundred years ago. None of this, though, compared to the horror of being forced to do the bidding of her kidnapper, who had strapped a bomb to her throat, as well as three others he used in his plot to steal the Sierra Madre’s promised riches. One of them had died, she said, along the way, though the way her jaw strained as she shook her head suggested to Veronica that necessity, survival, had outweighed her regret.

The Courier omitted many details as she recounted the story. Veronica would ask, someday, her curiosity mingling with a desire to help her process the trauma. But for now, she simply listened to what the Courier shared, even as the tale ended abruptly. “And then we managed to escape,” she said, “or at least I did. One of the others chose to stay behind, and I’m not sure where the mutant went. But we made sure that what happened to us can never happen again.” She reached for the bottle of whiskey on the bedside table and took a swig. “Anyway, need to get out of this crypt today before I lose it. Come with me?” Veronica had never been able to say no to that request.

They took the beat-up old robot and ventured southeast, passing wordlessly through Camp Forlorn Hope and avoiding Nelson. Their business today was not about the war, it seemed. When they reached their destination, what appeared to be an old sewer grate, the Courier turned to Veronica with tension in her shoulders and a determined look in her eyes.

“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you earlier. I… I found Elijah, at the Madre.”

“Oh.” Veronica’s heart felt like it had stopped. She hadn’t carried any assumption, any hope that she’d learn what happened to him after HELIOS One. Maybe she’d always known that whatever he went on to do next, she wouldn’t want to have to learn of it, to reconcile it against her memories of him as a father figure.

The Courier kicked at the dirt with the toe of her boot. “He had a hideout here. Left something for you. We can go in, together, if you’d like. Or I can bring it out to you. I know this can’t be easy-”

“Let’s go. I’m ready.” Her heart had started again. It felt heavier than before, but also fuller. She could face loss and resentment and shame, could face her own past, with the Courier at her side. After all, going back there so soon must’ve been even harder for her.

Elijah’s hideout was a mess, with books and tools strewn everywhere. She watched the Courier open a deposit box on the wall to retrieve some casino chips, which she fed to a strange machine that sat in the corner of the Elder’s abandoned room. It dispensed Stimpacks, always needed, and a bottle of whiskey. The Courier took a swig, then extended it to Veronica. She accepted, gratefully.

The holotape Elijah had left was labeled with her name on it, and the Courier assured her she hadn’t listened. When Veronica had seen enough of the hideout for her liking, its disastrous mess confirming her worst fears that Elijah had lost his grip on reality, finally slipped into an obsession from which he couldn’t be rescued, she left the bunker on her own. Sitting on a ridge, she played the tape; the sound of his voice, just as she remembered it, elicited an involuntary smile at first. It quickly became apparent, though, that even whatever care or duty he’d felt toward her could never have been enough to keep him from pursuing the Sierra Madre and its mythic treasures. His ramblings grew less and less coherent as he tried to justify his choices, tried to explain to her how he was going to save the Brotherhood from itself. It all but confirmed the fear that had immediately shot through her when the Courier admitted she had met him; that he was the one who had done all of this, had hurt and used her. Veronica’s anger at this betrayal, one Elijah didn’t even know he had committed, wasn’t at all softened by her sad realization that the Courier had probably killed him. Whoever the man on the tape was, she didn’t know him anymore. She didn’t care whether he’d suffered as he deserved, or whether the Courier, always driven by her desire to do right, had made it quick for him.

“You okay?” The Courier sat down next to her, and the Eyebot hovered a little lower than usual as though it sought to mimic the choreography of human companionship. Veronica nodded, smiling weakly.

“Thank you for giving this to me. It was… a goodbye. I think. I’m gonna take it that way, at least. Whatever happened to him, it seemed he stopped being the Elijah I knew long ago.” She swallowed hard, reached for the whiskey the Courier still held.

There was no more conversation to be had about it, not today. The Courier wrapped an arm around Veronica, who in turn rested her head against her shoulder. They stared out at the canyon ahead as the sun set to their backs, then began their journey home, guided north by the lights of Vegas.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 note: I started writing this after finishing Old World Blues/before starting Lonesome Road, which is why it opens with Veronica waiting for the Courier to come back a third time. I decided to keep that, though, and run with it as a framing device, even after finishing the game and thinking about what a 5+1 fic would look like.


End file.
